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Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Where are the Mac OS X Games?

April 21, 2011 at 8:08am Pacific Time
by: Mark Reschke
Categories: Products, Review
tagged: Games, Mac_OS_X, EA_Sports, iOS, AppStore

Madden 2008 for Mac OS XIt was back in June 2007 that Steve Jobs and EA Sports CEO John Riccitiello, proudly co-announced that popular EA game titles would be coming to Mac OS X. Madden 2008, Tiger Woods Golf and more would soon find their way on store shelves and run native on Mac OS X.

It was a great moment for the Mac platform, but as it turned out it was short lived. Mac gamers got one version of these games — and then silence. What happened? Where are the Mac OS X Games? I mean the popular ones?!

Maybe it's a Market Share Problem
Many talk about the Mac OS X market share being too small to get new or good games. That may have been true several years ago, but lately the Mac OS X platform sales have been on a tear, besting the overall PC growth rate for 20 straight quarters. Macs are seen everywhere, along with iPhones and iPads. Unless you live in Redmond, walk into any coffee shop and you are likely to see as close to as many Macs as PCs. As iPhones and iPads continue to grow in popularity people are looking for a good computer counterpart to sync these devices. While PCs work, the real secret is using a Mac. Apple's Macs seamlessly integrate and just make sense. iPhone and iPad users start looking at their PCs with distain — cheap, clunky, buggy and slow. Macs are elegant and make a perfect match with their iDevice.

IDC numbers show that Macs were #4 in U.S. sales for 2011 Q1. While HP was flat year-to-year and Dell sales plummeted, Apple's Mac sales grew nearly 10%. Something is afoot, and it's that the Mac is back and game developers should take notice.

AppStore
With the launch of the Mac AppStore, developers now have an easy way to get their cool games in front of customers. Yes, Apple takes 30%, but then again there is no need to pay for design, packaging, shelf space, or inventory — all the nightmares of physical software are eliminated. The AppStore was a large part of the success of the iOS Apps becoming so popular. There was no "installer" or no installation process, just purchase, download and use. Simple, easy, effective. The Mac OS X AppStore also brings simplicity to finding and purchasing new software.

So where are the OS X games!? SimCity 4, Madden Football, Tiger Wood Golf, and on and on. They already exist for the iOS, so the port to Mac OS X shouldn't be that difficult, should it? Most of the work has been done. The Mac's market share continues to grow and delivery is now dead simple. We gammers would like to see these and other popular titles return to the Mac.

6 Comments

  1. Patrick ~ April 21, 2011 09:28

    The barrier to getting games on the Macintosh is Direct X. Microsoft created Direct X as a way for game programmers to access high powered and fast capabilities of video cards without direct access to the hardware (for security reasons) and without going though the (much slower) Windows APIs. Direct X has been substantially upgraded over the years and is extremely powerful. Vastly oversimplifying, games are written in "Direct X". There's no Direct X on the Mac OS, so games written for Windows must be rewritten for the Mac. #

  2. BrianM ~ April 21, 2011 14:10

    Patrick - most of the game porting houses (and others now with Valve/Steam releasing some tools) that help translate the Direct X API's to OpenGL (and other tools needed for the games). Not fully automated for sure, but greatly reduces the amount of time needed. #

  3. tom ~ April 21, 2011 14:56

    @Patrick. Good point, but EVERY 3D pro uses OpenGL. That is available on all platforms. Any developer using Direct X instead of the professional (and more readily available) OpenGL API is shooting himself in the foot. For nothing. #

  4. Mike ~ April 21, 2011 15:51

    Most game shops look at the Mac OS X platform and think that the numbers are still much too low to invest. They only care about volume opportunities. These shops also develop for consoles, DirectX vs OpenGL is not as big an issue. Steam supporting Mac OS X makes it easier for shops to support Macs, but you clearly run into the problem that Steve Jobs despises, which is the user's experience of trying to find a game for your Mac on Steam: you quickly find out that Macs can run only a few of the games on Steam, and then what? If you are a kid using your machine to game, are you going to stick with Mac OS X or are you going to boot up Windows to access more games? #

  5. Jason ~ April 21, 2011 21:33

    Do we really need OS X games? In terms of performance Windows is the way to go. Portal 2 on Steam barely runs on my MBA (1.6 G/ 4GB). Boot it in Windows 7 and it plays smoothly at native rez on high and medium settings. Even Dead Space 2 & Mass Effect 2 run well. It seems Windows as an OS is far more optimised for gaming. I'd love not to lose the HD space to Bootcamp, but for now it stays. #

  6. John Paul ~ May 02, 2011 12:27

    With the dearth of games on Mac OS X, you would think that some PC game company (who is probably a small fish in a big PC game pond) would want the prestige of being a big fish in the small OS X pond. #

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